Author: Bill Otis

The Clinesmith Plea Was Invalid and Will Have To Be Re-Opened

by · Aug 21, 2020 6:56 pm

Kevin Clinesmith is the ex-FBI lawyer who inserted the false statement that Trump staff aide Carter Page was not a CIA source into material used to secure an ex parte FISA warrant for surreptitious electronic surveillance on the Trump campaign.  He got caught and was charged with a violation of the false statements statute, 18 USC 1001.  He purported to plead guilty this week.  But because he refused to admit, and in fact specifically denied, a key element of the offense  —  intentional deceit  —  the plea is invalid.  The Assistant US Attorney should have caught this, and at all events the court should not, and legally could not, have accepted the plea when the defendant unambiguously maintained that he did not have the statutorily-required bad intent.  The plea hearing will have to be re-opened, or the case will have to go to trial.

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Commit Murder, Get Anger Management

by · Aug 17, 2020 3:03 pm

I wish this were from the Onion.  It isn’t.  It’s from what “criminal justice reform” has in mind for you:

John Weed was enjoying the Frederick County, Maryland, Fair last September when a group of teens surrounded him and beat him to death. One of the two brothers involved who later spat on Weed’s lifeless body has now been sentenced by the judge. Did he get the death penalty, which is what Weed suffered in front of his own family in broad daylight at a rural county fair? Nope, he was told to report to anger management class. Welcome to justice in America.

Not that the problem here was anger, for that matter.  The problem was sadism, very likely with a helping of the racist resentment the mainstream media never tires of spouting.  Read the whole story if you have the stomach for it.

Are Riots Caused by Police or by Rioters?

by · Aug 11, 2020 12:44 pm

You would think that question answers itself, but the Left’s dismissive belligerence in lying about the causes of rioting is so persistent that, in some quarters, it has taken hold.  Thus, it was only last week that Portland’s mayor was telling us that it was the introduction of federal agents (to protect federal property like courthouses), not the hoodlums who’ve spent weeks bringing violence and disorder to his city, that were the real cause of Portland’s continuing problems.

As the Wall Street Journal explains today, this was all nothing more than the usual aggressive tripe.

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Still Want to Defund the Police?

by · Aug 10, 2020 12:19 pm

Left wing leadership in Chicago and Portland got more of what they’ve spent years asking for when violent mobs of hoodlums noticed this weekend that they have the green light for party time.  That is, they took advantage of the Conventional Progressive Wisdom that the police are the ones who need to be contained (by being stripped of funding, weapons, and legal protection, among all the other things we’ve heard so much about lately), while they  —  the thugs  —  are to be regarded as the newly entitled victims of Amerika’s callousness and cruelty.

As you might imagine, what happened then wasn’t pretty.

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Blacks Overwhelmingly Want the Police Presence They Have Now — or More.

by · Aug 5, 2020 3:35 pm

One of the narratives we hear constantly from the Left is that African Americans distrust the police and want their malign presence in black neighborhoods decreased if not eliminated.  Like so much else we hear from progressives  —  the people who ceaselessly wail that we need to pay more attention to “fact-based” this and “evidence-based” that  —  their claims are not merely fact-free but affirmatively false.  According to a Gallup poll released today, more blacks than whites want increased police patrolling in their neighborhoods.

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Go To Prison and Live Longer

by · Aug 4, 2020 1:56 pm

The conventional wisdom is that a stint in prison is, between one thing and another, going to reduce your lifespan.  But scholarly inquiry shows this is not true.  The opposite is true.  See this entry on Sentencing Law and Policy, the body of which I repeat verbatim below.  The research is from Ohio, but I know of no reason to think Ohio is not fairly representative of the nation.

This paper analyzes the effect of incarceration on mortality using administrative data from Ohio between 1992 and 2017. Using event study and difference-in-differences approaches, we compare mortality risk across incarcerated and non-incarcerated individuals before and after pre-scheduled releases from prison. Mortality risk halves during the period of incarceration, with large declines in murders, overdoses, and medical causes of death. However, there is no detectable effect on post-release mortality risk, meaning that incarceration increases overall longevity. We estimate that incarceration averts nearly two thousand deaths annually in the US, comparable to the 2014 Medicaid expansion.

H/t to the estimable Doug Berman.

 

BLM Mob Converges on Home of Seattle Police Chief

by · Aug 3, 2020 4:10 pm

The Chief of Police in Seattle, a lady named Carmen Best, is a longtime member of the force.  I know very little about her.  I do know that she broadly shares the liberal perspectives of the leadership of that city, as one would expect of a chief of police.

Still, she has shown a spine, and an understanding that vandalism, rioting and arson are not acceptable.  This has not made everyone happy.  So they did what any “peaceful protesters” would do.  They showed up in force at her house.

Cross the mob and expect a visit.  If there’s a difference between this and how La Cosa Nostra operates, it’s too subtle for me.

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